The average GPA for a transfer is 3.77. That is not to say you would not be admitted but your essays are going to have to really set you apart. UCB is very competitive for admissions so just be sure to have safeties. I honestly don’t think it is worth the cost for an OOS student.
Also, I would not call UCLA or UCSD “lesser” schools than UCB. Your GPA will any of the 3 a reach.
Being disappointed is being forced to settle into “realistic schools”. If every single student listened to you, then there wouldn’t be anybody in a UC school to begin with. Every student in a UC school applied because they were willing to battle the odds despite the many people who told them that they were most likely not getting in. There is no limit to the amount of times I can apply to a school. If I get turned down one semester, I will simply re-apply next semester, and keep doing it until one of them accepts me. The only people who do not get accepted are those who give up after the first try or don’t try at all because they listen to people like you.
I don’t care if my GPA is good or not. I battled the odds for my entire life, and I won all of those battles. This battle will be no different. I will not settle for a Florida school, because if every single student listened to you, they would all be settling for “realistic schools” with nobody in ivy leagues. I want to apply to a school that will make me happy, not a school that I have the best shot at getting into.
I’ll admit, Georgia Tech isn’t bad, and I am willing to add that to the list of schools to apply to. However, with the shortage of engineers in this country, I still believe I have a shot at getting into a UC school, and I will continue to apply even if I get turned down. Afterall, there is no limit for the number of times you can apply to a university.
The UC transfer process is primarily designed to accommodate California Community College students. Well over 90% of transfers come from CCCs.
Engineering is impacted. The college is more selective for both freshmen and transfer students.
Transferring to Cal’s COE is a reach for everyone. Just make sure you have some matches and safties on your list, too.
@masterchief1994, wow, your assumptions are really naive.
I have lived in California all of my life and have already been through the college process with my children. I have one child at a UC.
If you’re counting on your essays to get you into Berkeley, it doesn’t look good for you. Your writing here on CC is evident of your need to polish up your writing skills.
You have a narrow view of everything and I feel pity for you because you aren’t listening to the advice of knowledgeable people on this forum:
-OOS students have no priority at the UC publics because we California residents pay taxes for those schools.
-All grades are counted by Berkeley
-Costs will run you $55K per year. No financial aid for OOS students.
-Weak writing skills
-You refuse to have backups
Wake up.
OP, you’ve received some stellar advice from these posters. They aren’t trying to belittle you, they just want you to be as realistic as possible. Take some deep breaths, and approach this as neutrally as possible.
Here are my thoughts:
“On the other hand, a 3.3 student could be accepted because he has a very powerful essay that explains what the school offers that he wants, and how he would die if he didn’t get accepted into it”
A huge red flag would go up if ANYONE included the line 'I’ll die if I’m not accepted". Essays should be how you’ve done insert cool thing here and would continue to do similar things at the UC. If needed, they could touch on how there have been some life challenges, but the difficulties you’ve faced shouldn’t take up the entire space, nor should it be a sob story.
"lesser schools in California such as UCLA or UCSD "
You are in for a rude awakening if you thing UCLA and UCSD are ‘lesser’ UCs. They are just as (if not more) competitive than UCB.
“if every single student listened to you, they would all be settling for “realistic schools” with nobody in ivy leagues”
Even students who end up at Ivy League schools had backups when they were first applying. The fact is that there are plenty of talented students for a select number of spots. Having a back-up plan is like having car insurance, you hope you never need it, but you want it to be good if you do.
“I don’t care if my GPA is good or not. I battled the odds for my entire life, and I won all of those battles”
You might not care if your GPA is good, but the UCs definitely will. Not because they are big and mean and want to reject you, but because they have limited spaces and want to admit student that will survive and thrive once they have transferred. One way (but not the only way) to gauge that is by GPA.
When you apply, you HAVE to report all grades/courses as they appear on your transcript. If you omit any the UC system will BAN you from ever applying again. Having an upward trend is excellent, but it is unlikely your freshman grades will be ignored.
I know it can be really frustrating when you want something and it seems like people keep telling you ways you CAN’T get it, but also make sure you are taking this advice to heart. We are just trying to show you any pit-falls you may encounter BEFORE you fall into them.
@luckie1367 I appreciate your approach. Look, I had soo many people tell me what the other posters were telling me. That is why I am getting frustrated, especially aunt bea by judging my writing skills based on a forum. Little does he/she know, I got an A in a 6 week vigorous class with a very strict professor. If I had bad writing skills, she never would have given me an A for her class. A lot of these posters have no idea how hard I work in college to make up for my first year.Before I took college seriously, I had a GPA of under 3.0. That was how bad it was. The fact I went up from under a 3.0 to a 3.3 pretty much shows dedication and effort. If you completely get rid of my first year, I would have a 4.0 right now. I think it is pretty silly how the belittling started AFTER I mentioned the grades I got my first year. That was why I wanted to leave my grades out of this. When they look over my application, they cannot just put me with everyone else who did not go through the same experience I went through. I have a medical record to prove that I was diagnosed with autism at youth and I went to a private school for kids with special needs for all of lower/middle school and my freshman year of HS. For somebody who never even gotten a HS diploma due to getting screwed by his father (parents are divorced, so I live with my father), I think I showed that I deserve a chance to prove myself to them that I can handle their work. All I want in life really is a chance to prove myself, that is all. I never gotten the same opportunities most kids got, so I would be happy to just to be accepted under a condition that I must keep my GPA over 3.5. Again, I very much appreciate your approach, but I just want to let you know that I am aware of the responses I typically get, and I am not a person who gives up. Typically, I persevere until I am able to achieve what it is I want. As for aunt bea…
“I have lived in California all of my life and have already been through the college process with my children. I have one child at a UC.”
Good for you. Your children have parents who care about their kid’s education. Well, there you go! That is why your kids are in a good university and I am not. I was raised by a father with limited educational experience and a mother who never even bothered going to college. That alone puts me at a disadvantage compared to your kids. Plus, I doubt any of your kids were diagnosed with autism and went to special needs school either. So again, the fact you have kids with one of them going to a UC is irrelevant. Plus, like I told you, cost is irrelevant. I have a father who can cover the costs easily. Yes, even if he has to give me over $100K, I can pay it. He might not have a strong education, but he does have money.
“If you’re counting on your essays to get you into Berkeley, it doesn’t look good for you. Your writing here on CC is evident of your need to polish up your writing skills.”
Well guess what? If a professor who went to Oxford and Brown University thought that my writing skills are at an A grade level, then it must be pretty clear that I know how to write. Despite the fact it’s a CC I go to, she is tough and many people drop from her class because of how rigorous she is. so the fact you judge my writing skills on a forum with absolutely no proof-reading shows how judgmental and arrogant you are.
“You have a narrow view of everything and I feel pity for you because you aren’t listening to the advice of knowledgeable people on this forum:”
All I hear is the same crap I hear from everyone else. “Your GPA is not good, go look for realistic schools to settle into.” That is what I hear millions of times. I appear to have a narrow view because I am a very dedicated person, and I do not easily let go of my achievements and accomplishments simply because a few forum posters told me to.
“-OOS students have no priority at the UC publics because we California residents pay taxes for those schools.”
Like I said, I am willing to reside there for a year and pay for any costs necessary to get that advantage.
“-All grades are counted by Berkeley”
Never doubted that. However, there is a upwards trend that shows signs of improvement on my transcripts, and all of the classes that are pre-reqs for engineering are all A’s. So again, I am not worried about the misc. classes I got C’s on on my first year.
“-Costs will run you $55K per year. No financial aid for OOS students.”
Again, costs are irrelevant because I have a father with money who can pay for it.
“-Weak writing skills”
Funny how you judge my writing skills based on a forum post. I honestly couldn’t give less of a damn whether you think they are weak or not. I’m majoring in engineering, not literature.
“-You refuse to have backups”
Like I said, I absolutely refuse to go to a Florida university. I want to go to a university that will ensure my chances of getting into Google as soon as I get out. The universities I mentioned will be my best chance of getting hired. What is the point of going to some cruddy university that you guys consider “realistic choices” if Google is just going to hire someone from UC Berkeley or Stanford over me?
Save your pity for someone who cares. I am sick of people like you trying to put me down. It won’t work, and once I get accepted into a UC school, then trust me, I’ll make sure you all who doubted me will know.
Can we just go back to first principles for a moment? If I have read your posts correctly, @masterchief1994, your focus on UC & especially Berkeley specifically because you want to work for Google.
According to Wired, the top 5 feeder schools for Google are Stanford, Berkely, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA and MIT, and the top feeder company for Google is Microsoft (that is Google hires a lot of Microsoft alums). Microsoft’s top feeder schools are UWa (by a LOT), UWa (Foster), Washington State, U Waterloo, and Western Washington.
Another list (from Poets and Quants) includes UMi, UIUC, Cornell and Harvard.
In other words: Berkeley is just one path to your goal. Given that pretty much every post is telling you that Berkeley is a very long shot for you, why not add some of these others? There is a range of competitiveness, and since finances don’t matter for you, OOS is much less of a problem at (say) UIUC than UC.
http://tech.co/top-feeder-schools-attend-want-job-google-apple-facebook-2015-01
Masterchief- your tenacity and perseverance are great traits that could take you a long way, however you do seem very defensive when people here are just trying to help. No matter what your GPA is, the UC’s are not always a good choice for OOS students since they are really set up to cater to those students who are CA residents. OOS students need higher GPA’s for admission and the cost of attendance (COA) is high- $55,000 per year for OOS. Even if your family can afford to pay that , I have to say that is a lot of money for an education that could be obtained elsewhere for much less. The UC’s make it almost impossible to gain residency here so you will not be able to get in-state tuition. Even if you are dead set against attending school in FLA there are many less expensive options with a better chance of admission than the UC’s. UCLA and UCSD are not considered “lesser” schools- admissions are going to be just as tough as UCB. It sounds like you have overcome a lot to get where you are now. Just be sure to come up with a well rounded list that includes some safeties. My son has a friend who started at Google 2 years ago- he started at a community college and then transferred to a very small, lower level state school. There are are many education paths to get where you want to go.
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/transfer-admissions-summary
Select transfer admit rate, Berkeley, transfer GPA, and other (than California CC). For such applicants, the admit rate for those with 3.60-4.00 GPA was 13% last year; for those with 3.20-3.59 GPA, it was 4% last year.
Also, Google and other famous companies recruit widely. Including at the University of Florida (put “university of florida google recruiting” into http://www.google.com ).
^^^ Those are overall transfer admit rates, I expect it’s even lower for impacted majors 
Op, by all means apply to any or all UC’s, but if you don’t get accepted, don’t waste your time trying to raise your GPA by going to CC. Go ahead and transfer to Georgia Tech, UIUC, UF, etc., and get going on your education. When you apply to the UC’s, apply to a few other schools as safeties. Don’t continue to spin your wheels at CC, you need to move on to the more demanding classes.
Keep in mind that after you get your BS, you could always transfer to a UC for grad school. Plenty of UF/GT grads work and live in California, it’s a popular spot.
Good Luck!
Read UC admissions transfer requirements; not my rules, but UC’s.
http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/transfer/preparing-admission/index.html
http://www.ucop.edu/general-counsel/_files/ed-affairs/uc-residence-policy.pdf
This is satire, right? Someone please tell me this is satire …
Nonetheless, I’ve been away from the forum for several days and this has been an entertaining read.
I apologize for how defensive I have been. However, when it comes to my transcripts, I typically get very defensive because I do my best to make up for the first bad year I had. I just think the whole system as a whole is not fair. I mean, if state universities are going to discriminate, then shouldn’t this be evened out by making all state universities equally good? I mean, the fact they make all the california universities on the top makes it very unfair for non-California residents. UF should be just as good as UCB, UCLA, etc., especially if what you all say is true. Nobody can control what state they live in, especially if you are raised by a white conservative business guy who values money and business over education. I actually would not mind settling for George Tech, actually. I am sure it will be easier to get into there than the UC schools considering the fact the school is much closer to FL than the CA schools. Plus, if I absolutely MUST go to a FL university, then it will most likely be UF, considering the fact that the university is the only university in the state that can actually rank for top engineering university in the country (of course, it is between 100-50, which just makes me hate my state even more). Plus, my father refuses to pay for my living expenses in CA and refuses to live there himself, so I am stuck in this overly-white populated hell-hole of a state.
I just hope someday, all states can be equally good in university ranking and not just CA and MA.